I find this difficult. If you enjoy writing action scenes, how do you make it work? Or if you've had trouble with them, how did you improve your efforts here? Specifically I'm currently trying to write a dragon hunting scene. Phew. I'm watching YouTubes of Eagles attacking goats and deer in the hope I can glean something useful. Examples, tips, suggestions welcome!
If you're watching YouTube clips of eagles killing their prey, I take it you're trying to gain a better understanding of predator attack mechanics? That can definitely be beneficial, but if I were you I wouldn't spend too much time with that research. My suggestion would be to always anchor your action to your character(s). Action is just another type of conflict, and in order for conflict to truly captivate us, we need to care about the stakes. And more than likely, the strongest investment your readers will have in your story will be towards your characters. Ideally your readers will care more than just whether your characters live or die. You want them to be invested in your characters' fears, goals, relationships, suggested destinies, etc. Those are the pieces that have hopefully earned your readers' concern, so use them. Perfectly describing an action sequence is less important imo than grounding said action with emotional stakes. So whatever violence you choose to show us, make sure it's through the lens of a character we should care about.
Have you read action scenes written by authors you respect and admire, and noted how they make it work? Really tear the scenes apart, figure out what the purpose of each line or each word is, note their sentence and paragraph structure, their pacing, every aspect of their writing. Then compare one scene by one author to another scene by another author and see what's the same, what's different, etc. Absorb. Attempt. Refine. Our best teachers aren't a bunch of random amateurs on an internet site; they're the authors we already know and love.
I've learned plenty from random amateurs on this site and similar sites. And I'm certain I'm not the only one who has.
Me too. I've learned more about how to write vivid prose here at Writing Forums from the likes of, Seven Crowns than I have Kipling, Dickens, and Conrad put together. That said, BayView makes the best point. Digging into the works of your favorite writers and doing a reverse autopsy, that is finding a cause of life, will help you immensely in your journey to become a better writer.
Good points. I must care about what happens and communicate that, the urgency, the imperative, the need. Clear vivid description, but anchored in emotion. Yep.
Honestly, no. I'm pretty new to this game. I don't even know if I have any action scenes that I love, I can find action scenes not terribly interesting in general. *lightbulb aha moment* I'll check out Harry Potter and GoT. I think Rowling and GRRM are good at that stuff.
Are you sure you even need to write the action sequences? If they aren't the sort of thing you enjoy, it might be best to gloss over them?
I want to try. I'm keen to learn what I can. It may be one of those things that comes easier with a bit of practice. I think I'm not terribly visual. I need to slow down and really think about that stuff. Maybe it will help me appreciate action scenes when I read them.
I've written my dragon vs prey action scene. If anyone would care to chip in on it, that would be much appreciated: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/firekind-scene-wrejhals-hunt-feedback-on-action-sequence.161300/
To begin with, the problem of not liking to write action scenes is one lots of writers share. Unfortunately, those action scenes are usually the payoff for the chapter, and so it is important to train yourself to become not only comfortable with them, but eager to engage. Many writers recall epic scenes writen in omniscient view, and work from that, but not much of modern writing is omniscient, so that's usually out. Even the best omniscient work tends to be limited omniscience, meaning that we find the view anyway, and follow that person into the action. Take your example chapter, for example, Harmonices. In that you have a dragon perched to launch itself upon a herd animal. But, in that you are still very omniscient because we get lots of explaining about how long it has been without a meal, and what the dragon looks like, so we're not really in view. The present is only what is before the viewpoint, and how that, in particular, makes the view feel. Thus, the first job generally is to put us in view and lock us there. The second thing is to slow down but be focused upon the task at hand. An action scene ought to be gravy time. You're not working to figure out what next because what next is right in front of you. Take the time you need, but don't linger. By that I mean to show progress. If you're stalking an elk you ought to show movement, be moving, become startled by a shift in the wind, PROGRESSIVE. Mulling things over is the opposite from action. Don't be in a rush to end it. Let the action dictate the emotional response. Don't define the world outside of the context of the action. In other words, as the dragon spots the elk it feels its stomach rumble. That causes it to worry that the elk can hear it, and sure enough the elk's head rises from the lily it had been nibbling. It looks around. The dragon crouches further and refuses to breathe. Or You can just tell us that the dragon hasn't eaten in seven days, and not bother to relate all the action to the information presented to the reader. I don't suggest it. Hope some of that helps.
Thanks @Gary Wed that's highlighted once again some of my evident POV issues. Got to get into the experience of the scene's MC and work from there. As you suggest, it'll be more show not tell too that way. I've got a book on characters and POV round here somewhere, might be a good time to start reading it. I was reluctant to spend too much time in the fight, as these things are usually brutally brief. But I could spend more time in the build up. Cheers
I've been posting an old novel as a web serial. I gave up on publishing it, but still really like it, so now it lives on my blog. The chapter I'm posting now isn't my favorite. It includes an extended 4v1 combat scene that runs on for nearly 2k words like the play by play of a dungeons and dragons game. Some people might think it is boring. Long combat scenes haven't really been a part of almost any book I've read. Most fight scenes are pretty short and involve no more than one set of counter blows. Good guy steps up. Bad guy attacks. Good guy counter attacks and wins. If it is highly climatic, the good guy's counter attack will fail once or twice while he's injured, and then the fight will stop for some amount of dialog or exposition. That's not what's happening in my book. They are just fighting, for pages. So mine doesn't conform to what I usually read, and it's not all that great, so I'm not exactly reinventing the genre with it. Is there anyone who does this well that I could study? Some kind of Rob Roy / Jacky Chan 10 page fight with multiple actors that's fun to read? I'd like to see it.
I think if you happen to have a long fight scene, it helps if you add in what the MC is feeling/thinking, and maybe some dialogue to break it up a bit. Though 2000 words is a tad long, unless you are treating it like a Boss/Final Boss battle with lulls in the actual fighting itself. I know that fiction and cinema tend to stretch out fight scenes to ridiculous proportions. In reality the physical body will start to get tired the longer the fighting continues, because of the amount of energy expended with rapid body movements to defend/attack. So actual fights will generally last around 30 seconds, to a few minutes between most people. Outside of the glamour fighting for show, the main goal is to get in and get it done quickly as possible, due to the feeling of life and death stakes of the situation. You also have to consider those involved, and what their strength, pain threshold, and stamina are (cause not every one is equally matched in a fight). Also where applicable the use of things in the environment as a weapon are typically employed to speed things up to a faster and easier conclusion. Extremely rare are fight is fair and equal to all parties involved. The human is an incredibly vicious animal when provoked into conflict, and will do whatever possible to get out of a confrontation that is violent.
Ten pages of the same fight scene with a handful of combatants? No, I can't remember reading that—and I've read my share of combat heavy fiction.
I had just written it the way I felt like. It's funny, because I read NOTHING but romance for the whole year that I wrote that book. When I wrote those fight scenes, I knew I wasn't sticking to the form combat had taken in almost every book I own, but I just ran with it. This next book, I'm going to try to be more conventional in this respect. Screenplays seem to stick to fight scenes less than two minutes long, before breaking to more relaxing imagery to give the viewer a break. Reading this chapter now bores me, and I wrote it. I think the book I'm outlining is going to stick to battles under two pages, and be more like what I've read, at least until I'm great at that.
Joking, mostly. I write fantasy, so it is usually sword or fist fighting, sometimes with super powers.
Those old cut scenes were amazing. The most macho thing I've ever seen in a cartoon is Captain America saving Chun Li from a helicopter... Spoiler
Most of the longer fight scenes in the fiction I read "earn" their word count with emotional stakes, as opposed to the spectacle of combat. For example: it's easier to justify several pages for an emotionally charged fight to the death between a father and son, than it is to give the same amount of story space to showcase the martial skills and abilities of a handful of combatants. In the case of the father and son duel, the author can keep ramping up the emotional language, which can help keep the reader invested in every single punch and sword thrust.
Just fighting itself is pretty boring. Things that can make a fight scene interesting are: Conflict between characters. Think of the climactic battle at the end of Revenge of the Sith. There are so many things going on there. An apprentice fighting to overcome his mentor. The emotion of having to kill someone you love like a brother. A shifting field. We see this in Mustafar too as the lava starts rising, etc. New variables. Introduce things that change the game immediately, and show how the characters react to them. Sticking with Revenge of the Sith, think about when Kenobi confronts Grievous and BAM, lightsabers. Not just one or two lightsabers, but four! We got a hint that this would happen, so it's not out of the blue ("another fine addition to my collection"), but when it happens we're still a bit surprised. Steep odds. This can work in either direction. Put the hero up against multiple enemies, or put the enemy up against multiple heroes and have the enemy wipe the floor with them all (think Palpetine's arrest). I make my fight scenes short and terrifying. People die (even if they're spear carriers) and the events are fast and hard to predict. In particular I like heroes who aren't good at fighting and have to do prep work beforehand to even stay alive.
Hm. I can't recall anything that's ten pages. You might give some of Robert E. Howard's stuff a try, though. A number of his stories--especially the Conan ones--feature fairly long fight scenes. The climactic one in "The Phoenix on the Sword" lasts around six pages, and even though the story is pretty old it holds up as well as anything I've read in modern fiction. Beyond that, I think Matt E covered most of the ways to make longer fight scenes work. I'd add that lulls in the action can be useful. They give the character--and the reader--a chance to catch their breath, process emotions, feel their wounds, make plans, etc.
